Questions on Seiki – Interviews in English and Spanish

(This Interview was conducted in English and later translated and published in Germany)

Kerstin: When Paula Heruth (Director, Zen Shiatsu School in Berlin) first asked me if I would like to put together some questions for an interview with you I was full of joy, but then ….no questions came to mind.

So much to ask
And at the same time no questions
So much to say
And at the same time no words

The deadline was near, actually already exceeded when in the night during liver time a sentence popped up: “Seiki is quiet in the inside and loud at the outside.”What do you think about this sentence?

Paul: First I would like to thank you for your interest, and for kindly devoting your time to the preparation of this interview. I appreciate that Seiki is a challenging theme to address, even in terms of formulating some appropriate questions, but here we are. I am glad of the opportunity and I will do my best to answer.

You’ve begun with a quite bold and sweeping proposition. I don’t fully agree with it, but it is a useful start because we must get a clear idea of what Seiki is, and isn’t. Seiki refers to Life itself in a deliberately all-inclusive way, very close to the source and spirit of Yin-Yang philosophy, which is the experience and observation of Nature. We are dependent on Nature but not on that philosophy. Akinobu Kishi, who developed the Seiki Way and was my teacher for many years, gave the meaning of Seiki as “Life-Movement Harmony”. That could be a description, or a simple point of view. The question is how we relate to that.

Ki is often regarded as the fundamental force of the universe, associated with change, and movement. When you notice this movement you say it is Yang, but Ki condenses to form the material world, corresponding to Earth, which is Yin. “Sei” is a Japanese word that means harmony, but the written character has another meaning too, which is “emptiness”. So life-movement harmony has “emptiness” as well; it is constantly empty of any characteristics at all, as well as being everything that we perceive. Seiki, as demonstrated by Kishi is the practice of living life in this open and inclusive way, which is naturally a healing path. When we apply it, we approach each moment openly, so the “here and now” becomes immensely spacious, with every kind of possibility. In the philosophy of Yin and Yang, the inside of things is thought of as Yin, because it is hidden, mysterious or dark. Within, too, is some kind of centre, a place of equilibrium stillness and calm. We can seek inside ourselves for this quiet and calm centre, but instead we may find turbulent emotions, restless thoughts, physical discomfort and inflamed nerves. We might maintain a controlled and calm appearance, but inside there is stormy weather. If we let our pent-up feelings out, we will shatter any formerly tranquil atmosphere. The feelings move to the outside and become “loud”, like thunder, but later still, after the “storm” has passed, both the inside and the outside are calm. So it is partly a question of timing, and of developing sufficient awareness too, taking care. Storms can also cause damage.

Kerstin: How did you get to know Seiki?

Paul: It was through my interest in Shiatsu, which I began to study in1974 in connection with Macrobiotics. In those days there were very few courses, all at an amateur level, but I was inspired by the healing power of simple touch, and by the Eastern philosophies. I also took a course in Western Massage and then decided to study Acupuncture. Six years later, after graduating and setting up in practice as an Acupuncturist, I felt a yearning to study further in Shiatsu and the traditional manual therapies. There were still no professional Shiatsu courses in England, so I sought advice from a close friend and colleague who had studied shiatsu in New York. To my surprise, the conversation turned in an unexpected direction.

My friend said she had heard of a Japanese shiatsu teacher, living in Paris, who had studied and worked with Masunaga for many years. Apparently, he was preparing to take some of his students for a long intensive course in Japan. She was thinking of going too and suggested I join her in the adventure. The teacher was Shinmei Kishi, as he was then known. He came to England in the Spring of 1981 and I attended short workshop with him in Oxford. This actually left me feeling rather puzzled about his approach, but something in it attracted me and, rather impulsively, I decided to go to Japan.

Kishi had called it Shinto Shiatsu, but it was more like meditative exercise in breathing and movement with some part devoted to improvised, sensitive touch, seemingly without any formal method or theory whatsoever. This was somehow linked to the Shinto training, even more strange practices at an old shrine deep in the mountains near Kyoto, chanting Norito (pure sound), standing under waterfalls, climbing steep mountains, participating in Tea ceremonies and other rites and arts. I did not know exactly what was happening. It was my first taste of a deeply transformative, experiential healing path that Kishi soon began to call Seiki.

Kerstin: Why are you fascinated by Seiki?

Paul: Nothing else has affected me so deeply, and continued to serve me as a guide, both on my own healing journey and in my studies of Eastern subtle medicine.

Kerstin: You once said in your Workshop in Berlin: “I do not see/experience any Zen in Shiatsu!” Can you tell us a little bit more about this point of view?

Paul: Well, this question puts me on the spot a bit, but yes, I’ll try. Interest in Buddhism grew steadily in the West during the last century, and Zen in particular caught the popular imagination and became fashionable from the 1950’s onward. Its characteristically simple, clean and sometimes severe aesthetic, combined with a sense of naturalness and spontaneity, exerted a strong influence on modern Western literature, art and design. This may have owed something to the simple monastic life-style and practical disciplines of the Zen (meditation) Schools of Buddhism, but it is important to see these artistic and aesthetic influences as part of the fabric of Japanese culture, and to distinguish them from the actual practice of the Zen Buddhist path.

The problem for us arises in relation to the title of Masunaga’s well-known book, Zen Shiatsu. This name was suggested to the author by shiatsu master Wataru Ohashi of New York, who was arranging publication of an English version of one of Masunaga’s books, already published in Japan under a different title. Ohashi correctly recognized that Zen had market appeal, and it may have helped to popularize shiatsu, but it leaves a confusing legacy.

It is true that, early in this book, Masunaga makes reference to the Buddhist tradition in his discourse about Japanese culture, philosophy, medicine and psychology. He then outlines some of the basic principles of shiatsu touch that encourage beneficial changes in the autonomic nervous system (findings of previous research conducted by a team that included Masunaga and Namikoshi). Summarising, these principles were “perpendicular”, “stationary”, and “penetrating” pressure, “concentration” (which he actually substituted for “two hands working as one”), “Hara awareness and “relaxed use of the body”. These, I dare say, are the closest to Zen that Masunaga’s work ever came, in parallel with his observations on the biological impulses of the amoeba in Kyo-Jitsu terms and the typical spontaneous movements or “expressions” linked to the meridians.

However, instead of emphasizing the unified, above-below relationships already existing in traditional meridian theory, Masunaga presents his “extended meridians”. Along with an adaptation of traditional Hara diagnosis, these form the basis of the treatment routines in the book, his Meridian Shiatsu method. Masunaga wanted to bring traditional and modern medical ideas into Shiatsu, and up to a point he succeeded, though perhaps “Meridian Shiatsu” is a better name for this widely accepted style. Further developed by later teachers in the West, it is apt as a manual therapy, but it’s not Zen. In fact, in its complexity, it is more like the traditional Anma from which shiatsu was originally distinguished. The early proponents of Shiatsu had actually indicated a more natural, simple, quiet way of touch. We really just need clarity about the benefits of different approaches

Zen, of course, also deals with human suffering, but in an entirely different and pragmatic way, following the principles of Buddhism and especially its direct transmission through meditation practice and experience. We can look at this for a moment, if you’ll permit me to continue.

Zen, or Zen’na comes from the Chinese Ch’an’na, itself a derivation of the Indian Sanskrit word, Dhyana, which means meditation – the disciplined practice of concentrated awareness or mindfulness, developed in sitting, standing, walking, or in ordinary daily activities (to which we could just add shiatsu touch). There are other schools of Buddhism, some more intellectual, some more devotional, and one can study the philosophy, which is interesting of course, but meditation is at the centre – it is what the Buddha actually did to gain freedom, to transcend the ego and become enlightened. The wisdom that comes from experience comes from practice first and foremost. The practice is to observe and recognize for ourselves the truth of suffering, its root, its remedy and the way to apply it. The problem is attachment. The Chinese Zen schools blended the earthy wisdom of Tao with the Buddhist teachings and developed the practice of “non-attachment” through meditation. In everyday activity, or in the arts, concentrated attention, sensitivity and spontaneity emerge as Wu Wei, or Wei-Wu wei, variously translated as non-doing, action/no action or better, “effortless effort” – something rarely found in contemporary shiatsu, though it is a principle of Seiki practice.

Kerstin: Every time I go over my notes which I made during your Workshop in Berlin I am deeply touched by your profound thoughts and wise words. Have you ever thought of writing them down in a book? Or, to write a book about Seiki?

Paul: You are very kind with your appreciation. Yes, I have in fact been working on another book. It is an ongoing project that began to take shape about about19 or 20 years ago. Initially the idea was to show how the various healing arts in the Eastern tradition are united by similar inner disciplines; also how the heightened body-mind awareness that is the fruit of such practices as meditation, Gyoki and Qigong supports the subtle qualities of healing touch that I had discovered through Seiki. Shiatsu itself had always seemed loosely connected to other traditional exercises, but no-one seemed sure what mattered and what didn’t. I had accumulated a lot of experience in different forms and styles of Taiji and Qigong and I realized that they too shared many essential features, though individual teachers emphasized different things. Only a few books, the real Taiji classics, talked about the subtle internal principles of the art, and I realized that historically all these practices, and the key principles that governed them, were the preserve of Daoyin, or Do-In, another subject on which little has been written but which had captured my interest.

I was inspired to try and write something based on Seiki, which is rooted in the same ground, and I spoke to Kishi about it – he also had talked of a writing a book and we both shared jokes about the difficulty of writing a guide to such formless, adventurous and experiential work. I had an outline plan and began to work on it, but I encountered a number of difficulties. These included the changing and indistinct parameters of Kishi’s work – for him too, it was an evolving project in which apparently important features were not fixed – the form could vary, the inner process was subtle, ephemeral and uniquely personal. What had at first seemed graspable was now even further away. There were certain things I was unaware of, or had not thought about deeply enough. What were the significant factors in my own path; not just training, but the circumstances surrounding choices I thought I had made? Healing has personal, historic, global and mystical dimensions, and some rules about life which are very difficult to encompass systematically. I made gradual progress but after writing four or five chapters, I stopped. The project is on the back-burner, as we say. It was very useful because it helped me to develop my own authentic way, and I am still learning. I continue to write articles to support my courses on Seiki and Daoyin Qigong, and nowadays I am much clearer about things. Perhaps the book will come back.

Kerstin: You once said: “Seiki is profound and effective but it is also facing a lot of opposition.” What do you think is the reason?

Paul: The main reason for this opposition is probably because Seiki operates in non-conventional reality. I don’t just mean that it’s an unconventional approach to healing. I mean the very fact that it avoids conventional concepts, and liberates us from dependence on formal knowledge, takes it beyond the confines of normal clinical practice and standard protocols of professional therapy. It offers some guidance, but leads us to an unfamiliar space where healing might be possible just because we are freed from the habitual configurations of body and mind. Most medicine imposes its solutions. It treats our disease and sometimes addresses underlying disharmonies, but usually we have very limited awareness of the process; we are unconscious of our resistance and of our power to influence our condition. Some therapies offer a more balanced approach but usually through a predetermined framework. Seiki training allows us to create a very different ambience that can support contact with the raw nature of life and allow conscious spontaneous change. We tune our perceptions directly, according to the reality of the experienced moment. Within Seiki, certain practices like Katsugen (spontaneous movement) also raise difficulties – how to manage such unpredictable, seemingly wild expression? It is another challenge to the norm, but it is possible. The training is precisely for that.

Kerstin: During your performance of a treatment you said: “Mine and her inner movements are going into resonance. But in case am not experiencing it, I can still continue practicing”.

Paul: I am not sure what your question is here, but I think you want me to clarify. In Seiki treatment we must be still and quiet, but alert. We might feel attracted, or drawn by the situation to move in resonance with what we feel from the other person. Then we can go with the flow, and potentially there is a lot of information in this. But if the moment does not manifest, or the movement is lost, we have to be patient, and content to continue our own practice – breathing and quietly observing. Surfers let many waves go by before there is a wave they can ride. If a person is a river, we can ask, “How is this river flowing?” There are different currents, some gentle, some more forceful, but if we are not navigating this river, not fishing, not swimming, we can simply appreciate the whole atmosphere until a certain action suggests itself. We have no special agenda.

Kerstin: While I attended three Seiki-Workshops I often heard words of opposition against this form of treatment. Do we have not enough patience or does our European mind always need a concept? Do we always need a formal technique or a structure? It seems Seiki has no rules at all and everything is possible?

Paul: In the professions there is an understandable need to establish the basis of working practice, where knowledge is combined with appropriate skills and intended specific outcomes. Medicine is principally concerned with treating disease, and both doctors and patients share a general understanding of this aim. Modern medicine is founded on a formally constructed body of knowledge, developed within the parameters of scientific rationalism, typically analytical and reductionist. Classical Chinese medicine has a different basis, but is still bound by formal and prescriptive protocols governing diagnosis and treatment. The manual therapies have always been a little different. Some are quite specifically focussed, others are more general, a little more holistic perhaps. They rely on the natural capacity of the body systems to respond positively, but they still represent this process formally. Shiatsu sits in this part of the spectrum, but it can be practiced more like a medical therapy based on “knowledge” that is purely representational (the meridians and the functions of the points), or it can be practiced more openly. The less we use precise techniques, the more we can listen to the person’s needs, consciously or unconsciously expressed. Holistic approaches, including psycho-therapy, acknowledge the inter-dependence of body and mind. The whole person and their capacity to optimize their life experience on all levels is the concern of more subtle healing disciplines. Seiki, with its focus on spaciousness, non-intervention, self-discovery and sensitivity for others, represents a stance both within and beyond the boundaries of conventional medicine, traditional or otherwise. In search of the truth, it questions everything, including the necessity of any prescribed action at all. This makes it controversial to some people, but it is not standing in opposition to conventional shiatsu or any other therapeutic approach. It is important to repeat that there are indeed certain rules of practice, and meaningful guidelines to accompany our development in Seiki, as in all the subtle healing arts, but these are related to life, rather than medicine. Also the focus is on the practitioner, not on what we might hope to do for the receiver. Seiki challenges us to look beyond our formal training towards other possibilities, to be more complete. It’s not new. The Eastern tradition has always offered the whole self-transcendent package

Kerstin: Does your remark: “If we do not know how to proceed… it is okay to carry on at every point you like, it is all fine!” leads to such a big irritation that most of us cannot cope with it?
Practising Seiki is supposed to be easy, is it not?
Is the freedom we are left with too big for some of us?

Paul: No, practicing Seiki is not necessarily easy. It can be extremely difficult and demanding. It is simple, but we shouldn’t confuse “simple” with easy. Our expectations and judgements are the source of most of our difficulties. If we don’t know how to proceed, we can wait and observe. Also, if we are trained in a form of touch, there is nothing wrong in returning to that form. If we think that everything depends on us then there will be a lot of anxiety, and fear about mistakes. But it doesn’t all depend on us – that is a self-deceiving fantasy, our ego playing a big trick.

Kerstin: “Performing Seiki is so simple, but this we do not recognize.” How can we achieve more knowledge/understanding about it?

Paul: Only through study and practice; through our desire, if you like. But anyway, knowledge and understanding are not so necessary in this work.

Kerstin: One joy/gift I experienced with Seiki was space. I feel and enjoy it every time I practice Seiki. Which joy/gift you have experienced with Seiki? Do you remember a special moment/experience during a Seiki session with a patient?

Paul: I have actually experienced many joyful moments, recognising this marvelous life-movement, and seeing how people are changed when they feel its real potential within themselves. Something that a person may never have felt before is that, deep down, life is working for them – this body, with innate, biological intelligence and such capacity for consciousness! It restores people’s confidence in their own life. It could be as simple as breathing. And for each of us it’s the same. Basically, there is something we can trust, in spite of many physical and psychological hardships. We can go on from there to create many good things. I have seen people make radical personal changes through experience of Seiki, in treatment and in group practice.

I was astonished too by some particular situations, as when I had occasion to work with a very young child who had suffered brain damage at birth. Her mother brought her to the clinic when she was just four or five months old and I worked with her at intervals for three or four years – only with Seiki. We discovered a remarkable level of empathic communication from the first sessions. Her eyes became focused and her spastic arm softened and reached up toward my hand. Her response and the positive effects of the treatment were truly amazing. I felt humble because she taught me a lot. I could talk of many other examples.

Kerstin: Do you mix Seiki and Shiatsu techniques during a session or are you only focusing on one technique? Are you still practicing Shiatsu?

Paul: Now I don’t think so much about these details. I just feel that one must be properly present and sensitive. I used to distinguish one from the other due to the big differences in the style of learning and in the whole approach. In a sense they are very different, and it took me all my courage to abandon the formal shiatsu I was practicing in clinic. For a while I just allowed the Seiki qualities to infiltrate my shiatsu, to change the pace or rhythm. I listened, made space and stopped touching so insistently. My patients gave me some very interesting feedback during this time. Then I changed the whole way of working, and to my surprise, I found that many people could accept Seiki and benefit from it. But it is not for everyone. I already had a mixed practice because I worked with acupuncture too, so I developed a flexible approach and tried to follow each person’s needs. That’s timing again.

Kerstin: I am very delighted that I could ask you all these questions. Please take my best wishes from the East German Bauhaus city of Dessau.

Paul: Thank you again for your thoughtful questions. Words are not everything, but they also have their place. I wish you the best of luck on your own way, and I look forward to seeing you at the Berlin workshops. We have a Seiki Summer School and a weekend course on Daoyin Qigong. We need the benefit of different approaches but the open secret is that really this is all one work, one journey.